Find and replace in Microsoft Word

'Find and replace' is a tool in Microsoft Word that can quickly search for text in a document and if required replace this text with a specified alternative. This is a useful tool for the qualitative researchers to:

Find where a particular word/phrase appears in the text

Formatting a transcript or anonymising a transcript (replace all references to the informants real name with an alias).

Using Find

Open your document in Microsoft Word

click Edit:Find (which has a pair binoculars as an icon)

The Find and Replace dialog appears. See Figure 1.

Type in the text you are searching for in the 'Find what:' box

You can then chose if you you search for the next time the word occurs by clicking on Find Next button. Or find all occurrences of that word by ticking the Highlight all items found in: box and then select from the drop down menu below whether you want to search the whole document or a selected area.

The More button provides further search alternatives such as match case or find whole words only.

Figure 1. Microsoft Word Find dialog

Using Find and Replace

Open your document in Microsoft Word

clickEdit:Replace

The Find and Replace dialog appears. See Figure 1.

Type in the text you are searching for in the Find what: box and the text you want to replace it with in the Replace with: box.

To chose replace each occurring text one by one click Find Next: button and then the click Replace button.

Or you can do find and replace all occurrences automatically, clickReplace All button.

The More button provides further search alternatives such as match case or find whole words only